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"Wake up," whispered Lestat. "We're almost there."
Louis stirred in his arms, green eyes blinking to life; he wore the drowsy, puzzled expression of a dreamer, and Lestat's heart melted at the sight of him. Louis's grip on him tightened as recognition set in and he realized where they were — a mile in the air above snow-covered mountain slopes dotted with patches of forest.
"It's so dark," Louis murmured, astonished. "I can't see a single town beneath us… are there even any roads?"
"None that go where we're headed." Lestat smiled and pressed a kiss to Louis's temple, pleased by the way Louis tensed with surprise and then leaned into him even more. "We passed a ski resort a few cliffs back, though. You just missed it. Perhaps when we're done here I'll rent a suite for us, and we can warm up by a big, roaring fire…"
But Louis gave no response. His gaze had fixed on the sky, where clouds made a fast-moving latticework over the midnight canopy of stars. It would snow soon, but not just yet.
One of Louis's hands slipped from around Lestat's shoulders to push his wind-whipped hair back from his face. Lestat was amazed by the unthinking gesture. His chest always tightened with dread when Louis let go of him even the slightest amount, but Louis seemed to have no fear at all that Lestat might lose his grip on him or let him come to harm.
Lestat couldn't understand it. Louis hated their powers so much that Lestat had never been sure whether Louis could not or would not read minds. And yet just earlier this evening, he had asked Lestat to fly them here all on his own. It had been his idea this time! And there had been no trace of fear or revulsion in his eyes, no sign whatsoever that he found Lestat monstrous now.
It had been such a simple, romantic request.
"I would like to visit the Auvergne with you someday," Louis had told him, in that heartbreakingly hopeful way he always suggested that they do something together.
"Really?" Lestat stopped in his tracks, heartbeat thudding like a bass drum in his ears. He felt almost dizzy, his stomach squirming with a feeling that might have been either excitement or terrible dread.
It shouldn't have been a shock. Louis had always been ravenous for Lestat in his own way, focused on his maker with the single-minded obsession of a scholar, if not quite a lover's devotion. But in those early decades, during their first years together, when things had been so bitter and tumultuous, Lestat had been thoroughly terrified that Louis was never in fact interested in him at all, but only in the secrets that he kept.
But Lestat had written his book, and told every truth that he knew, and Louis had sought him out anyway. And here he was. And here he remained, after everything.
"Of course," Louis said, his head tipped to one side. "Why do you sound so surprised?"
Lestat shrugged his shoulders. He tried not to envision the ruined castle, or Akasha's dark hair whipped by the wind and the snow. No one else knew that she had brought him there; their story was thus far confined to the series of floppy discs that held his currently unpublished manuscript.
"I mean, I made it sound miserable in my book, didn't I? Not exactly a hot destination spot."
"That doesn't matter to me." Louis shook his head with a perfect, compassionate frown that made Lestat feel like the devil for ever denying him anything. "I would like to see the mountains you described, and walk the forests of your family's ancestral land, and hear the sounds of natural life there. I would like to see your castle, if it still stands, or the spot where it once stood if it has fallen into ruin." His hand tightened on Lestat's arm, his voice so soft and heartrendingly earnest. "I want to hunt where you hunted."
And how could he have said no to something like that?
They touched down where a gate had once stood, though there was no sign at all of the structure now. That wasn't surprising; the old walls had fallen into disrepair just like everything else, before Lestat was even born. No guard had stood watch at that gate for as long as he'd lived.
But he had passed through it each time he had gone out to ride, or to hunt, or to visit Nicolas down in the little village…
It occurred to Lestat quite suddenly and terribly that he could go and walk in that village right now if he chose. It was just down the mountain, not even a half-hour's walk when the weather was fine. Was the old inn still there, Lestat wondered, with its little upstairs room that they had warmed with fire, wine, and their conversation?
He didn't want to turn and see the little pinpoints of light far away through the trees. He was afraid that he would recognize the shapes of the houses and streets — that Nicki's old house still stood, somehow, that if he just tossed a few pebbles at the window —
Louis's leather-gloved hand slipped into his, and their palms met like a kiss.
Something snagged painfully in Lestat's chest; his heart felt like a balloon on the end of a string, bobbing wildly but held firmly in place. Had he been about to float away when Louis caught him?
Was this the reason why the old myths contained such dire warnings against looking back?
"We don't have to do this," said Louis. His voice was so soft and yet so clear beneath the nearly perfect silence of the snow.
"You wanted to see it, didn't you?" Lestat forced a playful smirk onto his face. "You aren't getting cold feet?"
Louis's nose wrinkled at the pun. He shook his head fondly. "Of course not. I still want to see it."
"Let's go, then," Lestat said, before Louis could add a but to the end of that sentence.
Of course he knew exactly what Louis was worried about, and he couldn't stand the thought that Louis might have seen something pitiable in his face while he was standing there.
Up the buried trail they went, toward the ruined castle with its single spire that stretched like a broken nail toward the jagged mountain peaks that rose behind it.
The snow was deeper now than it had been. Akasha had taken him here in the bitter cold of early November, but it was January now, and the snow had gathered in huge, foreboding drifts that lay heavily against the crumbling stone walls of the castle.
Louis's footsteps made quiet crunching sounds as they broke through the thin layer of hoarfrost and left bootprints behind him in the snow. Lestat's tracks were lighter, less human. It took deliberate effort for Lestat to use the almost-mortal gait that Louis did; it always charmed him to see Louis walk like a graceful man and not a vampire.
Lestat squeezed Louis's hand in its soft leather casing. "Is it what you imagined?"
"Some of it," Louis said, with one of his private smiles that was not quite a smile. "You painted quite a vivid picture in your book. The bitter cold, the darkness of the woods, the harshness of the landscape, even now, in modern times…" Louis looked up, toward the dizzying peaks that seemed to brush the very clouds themselves. "But I could not have imagined the mountains."
"My sweet Louisiana boy." Lestat pulled him close, savoring Louis's quiet, surprised laugh, and the way his free hand curled instinctively into Lestat's lapel. "Are you cold? Is the altitude bothering you?"
"No, not at all." Louis shook his head; his green eyes shone as brightly as if they had caught all the light from the stars. "It's very beautiful in its own way. But I would hate living here. It's quite stark, isn't it? Though, come spring, I suppose it must be very green."
"It is," Lestat said with a smile, remembering the rolling fields of new spring grass and wildflowers, fed by snowmelt running through clear alpine streams. "Though it's a different green than New Orleans."
Louis shrugged as though that were obvious. "There is no other green like New Orleans."
Lestat felt painfully homesick suddenly, a wrenching emptiness inside him that missed warm rain and steamboat bells and the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine. He longed for the music and clamor of Bourbon Street; he wished that he could see the spires of Saint Louis Cathedral rising out of the pre-dawn fog instead of the time-battered shell of his childhood home.
No, Lestat reminded himself, this place had never truly been his home. He rested his forehead against Louis's and listened to the sound of his heart, as steady and comforting as the grandfather clock that had stood in their Rue Royale parlor, and waited for the feeling to pass.
"Perhaps we'll come back when the snow melts," Lestat said, though he knew that they wouldn't.
With a quick kiss, he released Louis to continue their explorations. It was surprisingly pleasant to just walk the old grounds with him, now and then offering context or small bits of history: there was a stable there once, and just through those woods is the river where I used to fish, and do you see how the old kitchen roof has fallen in?
But Louis had his own quiet way of observing the world that made Lestat's commentary seem entirely unnecessary, and eventually he simply lapsed into a companionable silence at Louis's side. It was always a joy to watch Louis when he was unburdened by self-consciousness, the way his deep green eyes seemed to take in every detail as though the ordinary world was newly-born, and all nature's creation a grand work of art. He was hypnotically beautiful like this (and he was so often like this), his expression unbearably soft and wondering, his perfect lips just slightly parted in awe, fascinated by something as seemingly simple as snow weighing down the vast boughs of an evergreen tree.
Lestat wondered again whether Louis was warm enough. He'd bought him a new coat in London, and the old-fashioned cut made him look even taller and more slender than he already was. Just the sight of Louis buttoned up in it made Lestat's heart burn with a sweet, fierce protectiveness. He had done that, he had kept Louis warm and provided for him, and Louis had allowed it without even making a fuss. But it should have been fur-lined for weather like this, with the wind kicking up and the clouds congregating to block out the stars.
He thought of his old fur-lined cape, and of Nicolas, and something deep inside him felt like one of those ancient pines groaning beneath a winter's weight of snow, ready to splinter and snap. Had Nicki ever felt that same protective warmth looking at him bundled up in that cloak? Or had he always been the strong one, the hunter, the wolfkiller?
Something far away in the trees howled. Only the wind, and yet Lestat could not suppress a shiver.
That was why she'd wanted him, after all. That was the reason she had brought him back here. He didn't need to see the broken tower to feel it looming overhead; he could almost hear it mocking him, laughing in a dry voice that he hadn't heard since the night he was made.
Wolfkiller.
He turned his back on the tower, his stomach churning violently, pure animal fear choking his senses. Had to get away. Had to get out of sight of the thing. He could hear nothing but the urgent drumming of his pulse in his ears as he stumbled along the exterior wall of the castle.
The panic subsided as quickly as it had come on, and he found himself gasping for breath that he hadn't needed in centuries, one hand braced upon the cold rough-hewn stone of what had once been a doorway. The door and its hinges had long since vanished, and the wall nearby was crumbling so badly that none of it mattered anyway.
Trembling, feeling slightly less than himself — or perhaps far too much like himself — Lestat slipped inside.
Snowdrifts had piled in the corners of the giant empty room, and one side of the roof had completely collapsed long ago. This had been the great hall, Lestat realized, with a dull ache that felt like a bruise. He had stood in this spot with a dead wolf slung over his shoulders. The long table where his brothers had sat was gone or destroyed, and the armor and weapons and banners were gone, either up in the tower or looted.
But somehow, as though time itself had held a grudge, his father's eyesore of a chair still stood. It was a massive wooden thing, deplorably ugly, all bulk and no splendor, a grotesque parody of a throne. He knew his father loved it more than he loved him, because he'd had Lestat beaten bloody for trying to sit in it.
He could go and sit in it now.
So why didn't he want to, just to prove that he could? Just to stick it to the old man, as the saying went? Why did the very idea make him feel ill?
"Lestat?"
Louis's soft voice startled him. Lestat hadn't heard him approach. He wore a strange, worried expression that Lestat had seen somewhere before, somewhere recent — and that was the most startling thing of all, that Louis should be worried for him. Didn't Louis realize he was indestructible now?
"Are you all right?" Louis set a hand on Lestat's arm.
The gesture was so gentlemanly and so familiar that Lestat could have wept. Perhaps he was going to weep. Louis's brows drew together in profound concern, making a little furrow that Lestat wanted to press his lips to until it was smooth again.
"This was the great hall." Lestat's voice sounded strange to his own ears — so small, as though the stone and the snow might just swallow him up.
"And your father's chair?" Louis noticed Lestat's surprise, and he seemed to shrug without truly moving his shoulders. Such a humble little gesture. "I did read your book, you know."
Ah, of course. His confession.
Louis looked at him with the most heartbreaking expression, snowflakes gathered like stars in his hair. "We don't have to stay. I would never have asked you to come if—"
"I wanted you to come." Lestat found his words finally, and he cut Louis off before his compassion could become too much to bear. "Maybe it's like how you had to see the old flat one more time. Or maybe I just wanted someone else to see it. Someone who would understand…"
"What you lost."
Lestat nodded. His throat was suddenly too tight to speak; his heart felt as if it was going to crack right down the center and spill everything that he was.
"Yes," said Louis, speaking so that Lestat wouldn't have to. "I know what it means to grieve a life that never truly made you happy… to mourn something that you don't actually miss. I do."
Lestat turned and embraced Louis tightly, burying his face against his shoulder until the urge to weep like a child had passed as much as it ever did.
Louis kissed both Lestat's cheeks, and did not pull away very far when he spoke: "Lestat. I have a thought. And you may disregard it if you wish…"
"What is it?"
"I think that you should burn your father's chair."
Lestat stared at him, stunned, until at last he just began to laugh. It was as if the dam that had held back his weeping had burst, only instead of tears it was laughter, endless and loud and hysterical. He laughed until he saw stars in his eyes, and Louis had to put an arm around him to keep him from doubling over with it.
To Louis's credit, he didn't appear horrified — but then, he had known Lestat longer than anyone else. He had seen this same thing plenty of times in the past. At least this time he knew why it was happening.
"My beloved arsonist," Lestat laughed, spinning Louis in a delirious embrace, snow from the broken roof whirling around them. "This can't be how we solve all our problems."
"I realize I'm a terrible influence on you," Louis said, in the wry tone that he reserved for amusing Lestat. "But just this once, I hope you will permit it."
Louis pressed something into Lestat's hand.
A book of matches.
"I know you don't actually need it," said Louis, his head bowed, almost bashful, as if he were offering something far more serious than a crumpled little souvenir he'd gotten from a Soho bar.
Lestat was astonished again.
Did Louis know how he hated the Fire Gift? Lestat hadn't told him. He had been too afraid even to speak of it, terrified that he might summon the flames just by thinking of them. He didn't want to practice it or learn how to control it — he simply didn't want it at all.
Perhaps Louis's horror at the thought of becoming as inhuman as the old ones — as inhuman as Lestat, now — gave him some insight into the self-loathing that Lestat himself could not give voice to. Or perhaps Louis simply understood, the same way he understood so many things, as if he had never actually needed to read Lestat's thoughts to know his soul.
Lestat took Louis's face between his hands and kissed him.
"Help me smash it."
Together, they broke the old chair into pieces and gathered them into the stone hearth to burn. The ancient chimney was partly caved in, but with half the roof gone, that hardly mattered.
The little flame flickered and licked at the old wood, leaving a small black scorch mark in its wake. It was not enough on its own, but that wasn't the point. The match was never necessary, really — and yet this would have been impossible without it.
For the first time in nearly two centuries, the great hall of Chateau de Lioncourt was lit by a roaring fire. For the first time in much longer, there was love beneath the ancient crumbling roof.
He had Louis now. He was home.